The return of James Gunn

By: Dylan Frazier

Email: frazierd@findlay.edu

After a controversial firing last July, Disney and James Gunn have made up and are moving forward with him directing The Guardians of the Galaxy franchise once again.

Years before Gunn worked with Disney, he had posted tweets that were in very poor taste, like pedophile jokes and gay jokes.

For those who do not know, James Gunn is very critical of President Trump and is vocal about it on social media. Eventually some groups that support the President found those old tweets and exposed Gunn all over the internet. Gunn was then fired from Disney. Soon after this many people began to side with Gunn and there was even a petition on change.org that received over 300,000 signatures. Eight months have passed since his initial firing but Friday, March 15, he was re-hired to work with Disney.

To say I am excited is an understatement, I love everything about Disney hiring Gunn back. The Guardians of the Galaxy movies are two of my favorite comic book movies of all time. He made characters that no one really cared about and made them into household names. Just the style in which he makes his movies is very unique and he is great for the franchise. He does a great job of using humor but infusing it with a lot of emotion, which is hard to capture. I was already excited for the third installment of the third Guardians of the Galaxy, now I am ready for it to come out tomorrow.

Let me be clear, Gunn’s tweets were absolutely inexcusable, and he should have never tweeted them out.  However, I think firing someone for something they did years before they worked with a company sets a bad precedent. At least to me, it basically says that people aren’t allowed to grow as people. Anyone who saw the tweets could clearly tell they were jokes, bad attempts at jokes, but jokes nonetheless. Gunn has said before he isn’t perfect and that he has made mistakes and he made the Guardians movies to reflect that. Gunn showed his remorse as soon as the tweets became public and I felt his apology to be genuine.

I hope this can be a lesson for all of us that everything you ever say on the internet can be and will be used against you. Say one bad thing and it could cost you your job. People have to be smart online because as you can see with what happened with Gunn, all it takes is one person to take you down.